Stalking Darkness (53 page)

“You don’t suppose Nysander could be trying to reach you this way?” Micum asked without much hope.

“I wish it was, but I think I’d feel it if it was that.” He took a sip of ale and stared disconsolately up at the cabin ceiling.

“Illior’s Light, Micum, what I do feel is a wrongness in him not being here. And Alec.”

Seregil reached inside his coat, felt the dagger hilt there, and the soft lock of hair. If they were too late, if Alec died, was dead already—

“You never said anything to him, did you?” asked Micum. “About your feelings for him, that is?”

“No, I never did.”

His friend shook his head slowly. “That’s a pity.”

Aura Elustri malreis, Seregil prayed silently, clenching the hilt until his knuckles ached. Aura Elustri watch over him and keep him until I can plunge this same knife into the hearts of his enemies.

The pounding of feet on deck overhead woke them just after dawn the next morning.

“Enemy sail off the port bow!” a lookout shouted.

Snatching up their swords, Seregil and Micum ran above.

Standing at the helm, Rhal pointed toward the northeastern horizon, where a black and white striped sail was just visible. “The bastards must’ve sighted us last night and trailed us.”

“Can we outrun them?” asked Micum, shading his eyes. At this distance he could already make out the vessel itself, running low and fast over the waves.

“From the cut of their sails, I’d say not. Looks like we’ll have to fight this time,” Rhal replied with a certain grim satisfaction. “I know your feelings on this, Seregil, but it’d be best if we take the offensive.”

Seregil said nothing for a moment, but appeared to be studying the oncoming vessel. “The sails on that vessel aren’t so different from ours, are they?” he asked.

“No, we’re rigged out about the same.”

“So you could sail this ship with those sails?”

Rhal grinned, catching his drift. “In the proper navy they’d call that a dishonorable trick.”

“Which is why I stick with privateers,” Seregil replied, grinning back. “The closer we get to Plenimar, the less attention we’d attract, at least from a distance.”

“By the Old Sailor, Lord Seregil, you’ve the makings of a great pirate in you. Trouble is, if you want the sails off her, we can’t use our fire baskets.”

“Keep it as a last resort and throw everything else you’ve got at her.”

“All hands, prepare for battle,” Rhal sang out, and the call was passed down the deck.

The crew of the Lady sprang to action with a will. The pilot hove the ship around to meet the Plenimaran challenger. Hatches were dragged back, the catapults fitted into their bracing sockets along the deck and on the battle platforms fore and aft, and baskets of stones, chain, and lead balls hauled up from the hold.

Rhal’s archers took their places and the edge of every sword and cutlass was given a final touch of the thumb.

“She’s showing the battle flag, Captain,” the lookout shouted as they bore down on the enemy ship. “Run up the same!” answered Rhal.

Micum lost sight of Seregil in the general confusion, but his friend reappeared moments later with Alec’s bow.

“Here,” he said, handing it to Micum without meeting his eye. “You’re better with this than I am.” Before Micum could think of a reply, Seregil hurried off to join one of the catapult crews. The Plenimaran ship swooped toward them across the waves like an osprey, closing the distance rapidly. “A warship, Captain, and they got fire baskets lit!” the sharp-eyed lookout called down. “How are they set?” Rhal bellowed back. “Two catapults to a side, fore and aft! Fire baskets to the fore.” “Keep at her bow, helmsman!” As the ships closed within a few hundred yards of each other, archers on both sides took aim.

Standing with Rhal’s bowmen along the port rail, Micum listened to the bowstring song of Alec’s Black Radly as he loosed shaft after shaft at the enemy. The song was quickly answered. Plenimaran arrows whined and buzzed across the water at him like angry dragonflies.

Welken, the faithful lookout, crashed to the deck with a shaft through his chest. Nettles was hit in the leg but kept on shooting. Others fell and the shouting and screams on both sides echoed over the water between the vessels.

No shortage of arrows, Micum thought, pulling enemy shafts from the deck and rail and sending them back the way they’d come.

The heavy thud of the catapults sounded fore and aft as catapults on both sides let fly. Flaming balls of a pitchy concoction known as Sakor’s Fire sailed across the Lady’s bow, narrowly missing her forward sail. The Lady responded with double loads of chain that clawed through the enemy’s rigging, collapsing one of her mainsails like a broken wing. Panicked shouts rang out on the enemy ship as she slowed.

“Hard about and give her another!” Rhal ordered.

Skywake fought the rudder to port and the Lady leaned dangerously into the waves as they wheeled to press their advantage. A groaning volley from the port catapults smashed the Plenimarans’ forward mast and the enemy ship yawed, wallowing in the swells.

Like a wounded dragon, the Plenimarans released a second volley of Sakor’s Fire as the Lady passed. This one found its mark, striking the forward platform. An oily sheet of flame engulfed a catapult and its crew. Burning men fell writhing to the deck or leapt overboard. Sailors tore the covers from sand barrels lashed against the rails, smothering the flames before they could spread.

Choking on the smell of burning flesh, Seregil dropped his load of chain and ran up the platform ladder to help drag the wounded away from the flames.

“What now?” he called, spotting Rhal on the deck below. “Hard around, strike sails and board ‘em,” Rhal yelled. “Makewell, Coryis, tell your group to stand ready with the grapples.”

A final volley of stones from a Plenimaran catapult shattered the Lady’s main mast as she bore down on them. Dodging the fallen spars, the grappling crew tossed their hooks across and hauled the two ships together before the Plenimarans could cut the ropes. As soon as the bulwarks were close enough to leap, Rhal’s fighters boarded the other ship and waded into the black-uniformed marines massed to repel them.

From his vantage point on the platform, Seregil scanned the fray for Micum’s red mane. As expected, his companion was already across in the thickest of the fight.

The gods chose you well for the Vanguard, Seregil thought, shinnying down the ladder and elbowing his way to the rail. Reaching it, he did his best to ignore the foaming chasm that opened and closed beneath him as the two disabled vessels wallowed in the swells. He made his jump, drew his sword, and was immediately confronted by a Plenimaran sailor armed with a cutlass.

The battle soon spread to both ships. Somehow in the confusion, Micum and Seregil found each other and fought shoulder to shoulder, back to back, as the precariously balanced fight raged on.

For a time it seemed that it would go on indefinitely, but in the midst of the melee one of Rhal’s seamen killed the captain of the Plenimaran ship. At almost the same moment, Micum struck down the commander of the marines. Confusion spread among the remaining enemy and they finally surrendered.

A cheer went up from the Lady as the surviving enemy sailors and soldiers threw down their weapons in surly submission. Whooping and howling their triumph, Rhal’s men surged forward to loot the vanquished ship.

Exhausted, Seregil and Micum left them to it and jumped back aboard the Lady.

“By the Flame, that was a proper fight,” Micum gasped, nudging a severed hand out of the way with his foot before collapsing on a bulkhead.

Looking his friend over, Seregil saw that Micum had come out with no more than a cut over one eye. He’d taken a shallow cut across the shoulder himself.

Stripping off his tunic and shirt, he glanced at it, then held a wad of cloth against it to stanch the bleeding. “Too close quarters for my taste,” he said, collapsing on the deck with his back to the bulkhead.

Rhal appeared from out of the surrounding confusion and strode over to where they sat. “Well, we caught your ship for you but there’s still better than twenty of her crew left standing,” he informed Seregil. “I know we don’t want to be weighed down with prisoners, but I’ll tell you straight that I won’t be a party to the execution of beaten men.”

“Neither will I,” Seregil told him wearily. “I say strip whatever we need off her, take the sails, and set the crew adrift on her with food and water. How long will repairs to the Lady take?”

Rhal rubbed his jaw, looking around at the damage. “We’ll have to step a new mast and rig the new sails. No sooner than sunup tomorrow.”

“How many days to Plenimar?”

Rhal eyed the sky. “Barring foul weather, I’d say three days, maybe four. Running with Plenimaran sails could save us a fight or two.”

Seregil looked to Micum, but the big man merely shrugged. “Do it, then,” Seregil told the captain. “And put the Plenimarans to work, too.”

H
ands. Hands on him, touching, seeking, tormenting.

Alec wrapped his arms around his knees, curling tightly in the darkness of the tiny cabin as he fought to block out the memory of being touched and wishing he still had Thero for company. He’d seen no sign of the young wizard since that first night on board the Kormados.

Mardus and his people were subtle in their methods; in all the terrible time since his capture they hadn’t once broken the skin, or drawn so much as a drop of blood. But inside he hurt.

Oh, yes. He hurt very much.

The dyrmagnos Irtuk Beshar, a walking nightmare, had straddled him with her withered hams, flaking fingers scrabbling over him in a grotesque parody of lust as she ripped her way into his mind, raping the memories from him. She’d kissed him afterward, thrusting a tongue like a ragged strip of moldy leather against his clenched teeth.

The necromancer, Vargul Ashnazai, assisted her in these interrogations and Alec soon came to fear him on a deeper level than he did the dyrmagnos or Mardus.

The former carried out her hallucinatory tortures with zest, but as soon as she’d finished, Alec seemed to cease to exist in her mind. Mardus was more difficult to read. It was he who directed the tortures and put the questions to Alec, his eyes flat and soulless, his voice as gentle as a father’s as he named the next obscenity to be carried out.

Otherwise, however, he treated Alec with a peculiar mix of distance and solicitude that bordered on courtliness. In the worst moments of torment, Alec sometimes caught himself inexplicably looking to Mardus for rescue.

Ashnazai was different. In the presence of others, the necromancer maintained an impassive demeanor. Left alone with Alec, the searing hatred spilled out like acid.

“You and your vile companion cost me great status that night in Wolde,” he’d hissed in Alec’s ear as the boy lay trembling in the darkness after one of the dyrmagnos’ assaults. “At first I thought only of killing you, but now, you see, I am given by the Beautiful One to relish my revenge.”

And relish it he did, until Alec came to dread the sight of him more than any of the others.

Ashnazai’s attacks left no marks, drew no blood. Instead, he salted his spells with lurid descriptions of the murders he’d helped carry out at the Cockerel.

“It’s a pity you didn’t arrive earlier that night,” he told Alec. “The old woman never said a word, but how that foolish son begged. And the girl! She stayed proud right up until they hacked off the old bitch’s head, then she screamed, those great breasts of hers heaving. The men wanted to take her right there on the bloody floor—“

Held silent and immobile by the magic, Alec could only shudder as Ashnazai passed a clammy hand over his chest, then traced a hard line down his breastbone. “Did you ever take her on that floor, boy? No? Ah, well, I suppose other things happened there, eh? But then, snik, snik, snik, like so we had the heads off for the mantel decoration. I must say, your reaction was all that I’d have hoped for. I nearly added your head to the collection, but then I thought of a more—how would you say?”

The necromancer traced the line down Alec’s chest a second time with a look of almost dreamy pleasure. “A more satisfying revenge. You shall pay for the difficulties you made, and be of great use.”

The implication was clear enough. Thinking of the bodies Micum and Seregil had seen, with their chests split open, ribs pulled back on either side like wings, Alec wished they had killed him that first night.

The rounds of torture continued for several days and when they’d finished with him, Alec finally understood why Nysander had told Seregil and him so little. They wrung everything from him, though it was nothing more than the fragment of the prophecy.

“There now. Well done, Alec,” Mardus said, smiling down at him when the dyrmagnos had finished. “But your Guardian is dead, this mysterious band of four he spoke of sundered, broken. Poor Seregil. Even if he did desert you in the end, he must be feeling a bit guilty at having brought such destruction down on so many of his friends.”

Torn loose from any shred of hope or pride, Alec could only turn his face away and weep.